Time Machine, will following plan work?

Time Machine, will following plan work?
A Time Machine usage plan as described below seems to meet our requirements.
I kindly ask you for feedback if it will work. Any shortcomings if to compare it with Time Machine steady operation?

It is external mass storage.
Normally TM is off - OS X Preferences.
Administrator connects TM external storage and enables TM in OS X preferences.
Then the backup is started by invoking appropriate menu item.
As soon as backup completes the external storage is disconnected
and TM disabled in OS X preferences.
Whole procedure is repeated once a week.

Time Machine, will following plan work?
A Time Machine usage plan as described below seems to meet our requirements.
I kindly ask you for feedback if it will work. Any shortcomings if to compare it with Time Machine steady operation?

It is external mass storage.
Normally TM is off - OS X Preferences.
Administrator connects TM external storage and enables TM in OS X preferences.
Then the backup is started by invoking appropriate menu item.
As soon as backup completes the external storage is disconnected
and TM disabled in OS X preferences.
Whole procedure is repeated once a week.

Click to expand...

Will it work? Yes. Should you do it this way? No.

Time Machine is designed to be used in conjunction with a constantly connected backup drive. It will work, but the backups are spaced out by week so if you lose files you may be out of luck. Think about getting an NAS or Time Capsule for light duty Time Machine functions.

Staff Member

Time Machine, will following plan work?
A Time Machine usage plan as described below seems to meet our requirements.
I kindly ask you for feedback if it will work. Any shortcomings if to compare it with Time Machine steady operation?

It is external mass storage.
Normally TM is off - OS X Preferences.
Administrator connects TM external storage and enables TM in OS X preferences.
Then the backup is started by invoking appropriate menu item.
As soon as backup completes the external storage is disconnected
and TM disabled in OS X preferences.
Whole procedure is repeated once a week.

Click to expand...

That will work fine, but if your drive dies you would lose anything not backed up in the days between the weekly backups.

If you want to do it this way though, there is no need to turn TM on and off each time. Just leave it on all the time and when you connect the drive just click the TM menu icon and tell it to Backup Now. No reason to mess with turning TM off and on all the time.

By turning TM off and on each time you are actually negating a good feature called local snapshots that keeps deleted file versions in a hidden space on your internal drive.

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